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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY

Brazilian Deforestation Fueled by Slavery

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Forest Networking a Project of Forests.org, Inc.

http://forests.org/ -- Forest Conservation Portal

http://forests.org/web/ -- Discuss Forest Conservation

March 25, 2002

OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org

Commercial scaled rainforest logging is evil. Rainforest logging

destroys species. It eliminates ecosystems we need for survival.

Rainforest logging destroys economies and community well-being.

Rainforest logging violates human rights – even fostering slavery. Do

not tolerate rainforest logging. Rainforest logging is unjust, unwise

and ecocidal. Let’s make them stop.

g.b.

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Title: Brazil's Prized Exports Rely on Slaves and Scorched Land

Source: Copyright 2002 New York Times

Date: March 25, 2002

Byline: LARRY ROHTER

INGUARA, Brazil — The recruiters gather at the bus station here in

this grimy Amazon frontier town, waiting for the weary and the

desperate to disembark. When they spot a target, they promise him a

steady job, good pay, free housing and plenty of food. A quick

handshake seals the deal.

But for thousands of peasants, that handshake ensures a slide into

slavery. No sooner do they board the battered trucks that take them

to work felling trees and tending cattle deep in the jungle than

they find themselves mired in debt, under armed guard and unable to

leave their new workplace.

"It was 12 years before I was finally able to escape and make my way

back home," said Bernardo Gomes da Silva, 42. "We were forced to

start work at 6 in the morning and to continue sometimes until 11 at

night, but I was never paid during that entire time because they

always claimed that I owed them money."

Interviewed recently in his hometown, Barras, about 600 miles east

of here, Mr. Gomes da Silva said particularly troublesome workers,

especially those who kept asking for their wages, were sometimes

simply killed.

"I can't read, so maybe a half-dozen different times I was ordered

to burn the identity cards and work documents of workers who I had

last seen walking down the road, supposedly on their way out," he

said. "We also found heaps of bones out in the jungle, but none of

us ever talked about it."

Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, in

1888, and forced labor for both blacks and whites continued

throughout the 20th century in some rural areas. But government

authorities admit that despite a federal crackdown announced seven

years ago, "contemporary forms of slavery" in which workers are held

in unpaid, coerced labor continue to flourish. The reasons range

from ranchers in cahoots with corrupt local authorities to

ineffective land reform policies and high unemployment.

Perhaps most important, though, is the growing pressure to exploit

and develop the Amazon's vast agricultural frontier, in part to

supply foreign markets with two prized goods: timber and beef.

In the jungle west of here, fortunes are being made clearing the

forest and harvesting mahogany and other tropical hardwoods,

including jatoba and ipe. The United States is the main importer of

Brazilian mahogany, and though logging has been permitted only in 13

designated areas, Greenpeace, the advocacy group, has listed nearly

100 companies it says deal in illegal mahogany to meet a growing

demand from American furniture makers.

Furniture companies like Ethan Allen and L. & J. G. Stickley say

their mahogany comes only from "suppliers that advise us that they

comply with responsible forest practices," as Ethan Allen Interiors

Inc. of Danbury, Conn., put it in a statement. But the companies

also acknowledge that they do not have independent monitors and do

not believe that they should have to determine the origin of

imported wood.

"We cannot do the job of the Brazilian government," said Aminy Audi,

an owner of Stickley, a big buyer of Brazilian mahogany in Manlius,

N.Y., for its own stores and a manufacturer for other brands. "We

have to believe the certification, and we have had no reason to

believe otherwise."

Brazilian government statistics indicate that Aljoma Lumber of

Medley, Fla., near Miami, was the largest importer of Brazilian

mahogany in the United States in 2000. Asked about slave labor in

the Amazon, the company's vice president for hardwoods, Romel

Bezerra, said that "there is no such thing these days," and insisted

that his company's mahogany came from legal sources.

"Brazil has put in place many, many regulations, with export

licenses and stamps all over the place," he said. "They have

established strict controls on logging and cutting and

transportation and export, so it is impossible to ship mahogany

illegally."

But the Brazilian government has estimated that as much as 80

percent of Amazon timber comes from illegal sources, according to a

confidential 1997 report. In booming mill towns like this one,

dealers openly resell, copy or simply counterfeit the government

certificates needed to export timber.

When a shipment of mahogany reaches the port of Belém for shipment

to the United States, government inspectors have no way to determine

its origin.

As the trees have fallen, there has also been a huge expansion in

cattle ranches that raise grass-fed "green beef." Brazil's

commercial cattle herd, the largest in the world, generally does not

eat manufactured feed or synthetic supplements.

That makes Brazilian beef especially attractive in Europe and the

Middle East, where fears of mad cow disease are still strong.

Exports of Brazilian beef, fresh and processed, grew 30 percent in

2001, to $1 billion, according to government statistics.

"Slave labor in Brazil is directly linked to deforestation," Cláudio

Secchin, director of the Ministry of Labor's special antislavery

Mobile Enforcement Team, said in an interview in Brasília. "There

are more and more cattle ranchers who want to increase the size of

their herds, but to do that they need more space, so the clearing of

land is a constant."

In 1995, the first year that Mr. Secchin's team operated, 288

farmworkers were freed from what was officially described as

slavery, a total which rose to 583 in 2000. Last year, however, the

government freed more than 1,400 slave laborers.

Mr. Secchin attributed the increase to "the growth both of slave

labor and of our efficiency in combating it." But he acknowledged

that most cases probably go undetected.

A national survey conducted in 2000 by the Pastoral Land Commission,

a Roman Catholic Church group, estimated that there were more than

25,000 forced workers. A decade ago, there were less than 5,000.

Desperation and Coercion

Mr. Gomes da Silva, a slight, bearded man, said he had been forced

to work on four ranches over a dozen years and had met hundreds of

other slave laborers. Recent interviews with more than a score of

other former victims produced similar accounts of forced labor,

nonpayment for work and threats or use of violence.

The task of felling trees, some so tall they block out sunlight, is

dangerous and exhausting work. The unrelenting heat bathes workers

in sweat that causes chainsaws and axes to slip from their grip and

draws mosquitoes, flies and chiggers that bite incessantly and

transmit diseases. The dense smoke from incinerated tree trunks

stings the eyes, and predators like leopards and cougars are often

close by.

Still, many of the workers, desperate for any work, had journeyed

hundreds of miles to Amazon towns like this one and accepted

employment at ranches even deeper in the jungle. Once on the job,

however, they discovered that their pay would be less than promised,

and that they would be charged for transportation and forced to pay

inflated prices for the food, lodging, medicine and tools.

"We were obliged to make our purchases at the ranch's cantina, since

we couldn't go to town and the foreman forced everyone to remain in

the area," said Gilvan Gomes da Silva, 22. "But everything at the

cantina was more than double the price it would have been in town."

In addition, former slave laborers describe living and working

conditions as abysmal. Mr. Gomes da Silva recalled the time he spent

on a ranch with 48,000 head of cattle as particularly difficult.

Forced to spray chemicals to clear pastureland but deprived of

protective gloves and masks, he became ill and was plunged deeper

into debt when a foreman charged him for the medicines used to treat

him.

"The cattle were treated better than we were, since they were at

least fattened up in buildings with concrete floors, while we had to

sleep out in the jungle," he said.

"The only time we ever ate meat," he added "was when they had rotten

beef they were desperate to get rid of, and so there were men who

didn't have enough to eat and became weaker and weaker until they

just got sick and died."

The peons, as they are called here, were often told they would not

be paid and threatened with violence to keep them from complaining

or leaving. "When I asked to receive my wages, the foreman told me

`Kid, your salary is right here,' and pointed to his revolver," said

Gilvan Rodrigues Freitas, 29.

Workers fall into the trap of slave labor in different ways. But the

most common is to be recruited by the "gatos," or "cats," who go to

towns deep in Brazil's two poorest states, Piauí and Maranhão, to

hire laborers.

"They talk a good game, sweet-talking you and promising you

everything when they want you to sign up with them," said Francisco

Souza de Santos, 54, a former slave laborer. "But they change their

tune just as soon as they have you in their clutches."

Onboard the bus, a fiery sugarcane liquor called cachaca starts

flowing.

Days later, over bumpy, remote roads, the workers arrive in a

compliant mood.

"Our trip lasted five days, but we only had three meals," said

Onatan Alves da Silva, 53, one of 170 recruited workers who traveled

on four buses to a ranch west of here. "Two young guys named

Fernando and Severino wanted to go back, but the contractor," who

was heavily armed, "hit and threatened them, saying he could fill

them full of holes if he wanted to."

Going to the local police for help, however, is often futile.

Sworn statements by workers fleeing slavery are on file at the local

office of the Pastoral Land Commission here, reporting incidents in

which they went to the police in Marabá to complain of being held as

slaves and were promptly returned by the police to the ranch from

which they came.

"On the ranch where I was held, the cops were really tight with the

foreman, who walked around with a .38 pistol in his belt," said

Reinaldo Carvalho da Silva, 23. "They'd come around to his house to

have coffee and gossip, so there was no way I could go to them."

But it is also common for ranchers and contractors to decide that a

worker is no longer needed and to tell him that they will "forgive"

his debt. The worker can then leave, but must find his way through

the trackless jungle to a settlement usually at one of the many

shabby "pioneer hotels," that take lodgers on credit.

In reality, these boarding houses are essential to perpetuating the

system. Cut off from their families and unable to find anyone to

help them, escapees and fired workers find themselves once again

becoming prey for the gato.

Outside one pioneer hotel in São Félix do Xingu stood Baltazar

Ribeiro dos Santos. The government's enforcement team had freed him

in a raid last August, but a few weeks later he owed about $44 to

his land- lady and risked being sold to the next recruiter who would

pay the tab.

"I'm so ashamed," he said. "Nothing like this has ever happened to

me before in the 24 years that I have spent as a roving laborer. How

did I let myself get ripped off like that? I feel like slitting my

throat. How can I go home to face my wife and kids? I left with

nothing, but I can't go back with nothing."

Benta Borges, the owner of the hotel, first claimed not to know what

a gato was. But eventually she acknowledged her relationship with

the labor recruiters.

"There's corruption in the whole world," she said when pressed about

her business. "Whatever arrangements the ranchers or contractors

make with the peons is their business, not ours. We just give them

lodging. We don't ask questions."

Toothless Enforcement

Many ranchers are influential businessmen or powerful politicians.

Last summer, for instance, the enforcement team, acting on a tip,

raided a ranch west of São Félix do Xingu owned by Francisco Nonato

de Araújo, from Piauí, where he is a member of the state

Legislature, a prominent official in the ruling party and, until

recently, the state secretary of agriculture.

The raid freed Baltazar Ribeiro dos Santos and 59 other workers,

some of them ill with malaria, from what was categorized as slavery.

Mr. Araújo did not respond to telephone messages left for him at his

offices and on his cellular phone. But he has at various times told

local newspapers and radio stations that the ranch belongs not to

him but to his father, blamed the ranch foreman for withholding the

workers' wages and argued that "this type of hiring is standard

practice in the region."

The enforcement team cannot arrest or prosecute offenders itself,

and must rely on the local state's attorneys and courts, many of

which are either indifferent to slavery or openly sympathetic to

ranchers.

In addition, the Labor Ministry unit is chronically short of money

and resources.

At least part of the vacuum has been filled by the Catholic Church,

whose Pastoral Land Commission distributes a pamphlet to potential

recruits warning them to keep their "Eyes Open So As Not to End Up A

Slave." Many of the workers, however, are illiterate.

"Alerting workers to the danger is not enough to stop them," said

the Rev. Ricardo Rezende, who works with former slave laborers.

"Their thinking is that `If I am hungry enough, I will run the risk

and hope that this contractor is better than the other ones, because

it's better to take that chance than let my family die of hunger.' "

But Mr. Bezerra, the timber company executive in Florida, dismisses

talk of slave labor as "lies and politics," propagated by ambitious

officials "who want to run for office and want the green banner

behind them."

He, too, is a Brazilian, once lived in the Amazon and still travels

to the region four times a year. He says he has never seen even a

single sign of slave labor.

Both the Catholic Church and the environmental movement, he

continued, are infiltrated by "watermelons, people who are green on

the outside and red on the inside."

"That's right," Mr. Bezerra said. "They are a bunch of Communists

who think that all businesses are bad."

But Brazil's most prominent antislavery crusader, Pureza Lopes

Loyola, a peasant woman from Maranhão, tells a very different story.

Her brother, Ataide, went to work on an Amazon ranch in 1974 and was

never heard from again. When the same fate befell her teenaged son,

Abel, eight years ago, she set off on a three-year odyssey until he

was finally found.

"Everywhere I went," she said, "I saw the same scenes of workers

suffering from malaria, hepatitis other dreadful diseases, prevented

from leaving by armed guards. Now I have a grandson, and I fear for

him.

"I pray to God every day for the government to go after this whole

structure of slavery so that he too doesn't fall into this terrible

trap," she added.

"But I don't think they will."

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